


a touch of stardust

by simplyprologue



Series: no sense in hiding from the front lines [3]
Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: ANGST! ANGST! ANGST!, All Is Fair in Love and War, Emphasis On the "Hurt", Espionage, Eventual Smut, F/M, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, astronomy metaphors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 20:01:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7375495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna rides into camp bearing grievous injury. Two years after the American victory at Yorktown and his subsequent capture, Hewlett begins to outgrow the confines of his imprisonment. He does not doubt Anna's love for him, merely her convictions to come out of this war alive to live the future they've planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a touch of stardust

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** I hurt him first, so it's probably only fair I maim Anna. Besides, that woman deserves a good heroic arc. Let the battle wounds commence. There will be multiple parts. How many? I have no idea. Maybe four. But I say four and then it turns into six and an epilogue, so I'll just commit to "there will be more words than this."

_If you are reading this letter, my dear Edmund, then I am dead. I hope Ben informed you of my death in a manner that was comforting and gentle, but knowing my childhood friend in the plentiful way that I do — sit down, dear heart, and breathe. I may be dead, but my spirit shall never depart you. Be assured that as of these many years that I have loved you. Even after much scrutiny of myself, I cannot fix the hour or the date at which my love began — when you rescued me from Simcoe? The night at the telescope? When I began, after your capture, to fear that you were lost forever?_

_I have never known mine own heart with much certainty. Deciphering its intentions have been your expertise, and not mine._

_I love you. I have died loving you. One day, we will meet again in a heaven free of patriots and loyalists and nations at war. Find comfort that I will have found comfort in you in my last moments, in my memories of your love, your affections, and the fine man you are. I will have refused for the British forces to take me alive, or to divulge information. I will have died for my cause, and died a good death. I do hope you will, in time, be able to respect the country for which I have sacrificed the last measure of devotion. I know you have always fashioned yourself the Perseus to my Andromeda, but I was chained to this rock willingly. Now, let me save you._

_When you are ready, my love, open the next letter. There are events that my death will have set into motion, and you must be ready._

_Love Eternal & Forever Yours, _

_Anna_

 

 

 

At a gallop, the horse appears on the whitewashed horizon, its rider in danger of unseating herself out of the saddle.

The year is 1783, and she has been gone from the camp for some months, tasked with aiding Hercules Mulligan in rooting out the traitor in American intelligence inside York City. Dispatches have been infrequent, _Andromeda_ writing that they were coming close to the identity of the turncoat in their midsts, reporting back on incomplete ledgers and trails of British pounds and Continental dollars.

Three months gone, and then four, and now she rides for Washington’s Newburgh headquarters at a desperate pace. She rides into the dawn, hands numb as she holds the reigns. Remaining upright is a battle against the pains burning up and down her flank, her arms, her neck. Still, she tries to remember the postures Edmund taught her, his gentle corrections of her technique. Heels down, toes up, thumbs to the sky.

_Almost. Almost. Almost._

Blood and sweat run down her back in rivulets, burning the open wounds on her skin. If she were to look down, she’d see that her front was a canvas painted red as well, the neck of her thin cotton shift matted to her chest, the bodice of her gown sticky with blood. But she hasn’t looked down, not she she was hoisted onto the saddle hours ago.

 _God,_ but it hurts.

At first she soared, the pain washed away by the pouring rains and the fear that animated her bones. She galloped for what felt like endless miles, stretching outwards charting a course for north. Her mission has, naturally, ended in failure. All of the British forces have consolidated in York City, or have otherwise seemed to. Too many eyes, too many sets of ears, too many spies in one place. She herself is no longer an unknown. The British have been seeking the identity of Andromeda for years now and the identity of Samuel Culper for much longer than that.

She walked headfirst into a trap.

Albeit, by the time she was ensnared, she knew what fate was to come for her. So she had decided to come for _it,_ first. The nom de guerre that protected her for so long was the same name that revealed herself to Edmund, and in turn, the man who is obsessed with Edmund’s destruction.

Her survival feels like a farce.

The movement of the horse under her feels like a trick, her continued breaths a joke. She _died_ back there in that clearing, in the heavy rain. She felt herself leave. She sees the Newburgh encampment appear in the fields, stretching out for acres in front of her — a trick of purgatory, surely. She cannot have survived the night.

She urges the horse to slow to a cantor; life drains from her for a second time in so many hours, but she has carried the message to Washington. If the Revolution has gained one last martyr, then so be it, she has never been so tired nor so weary, she has never experienced a pain such as this, as if every nerve of her body has been pulled taut and then plucked. If she is Andromeda, then Cepheus is General Washington and Cassiopeia is Congress and it is Perseus who is in chains as she is slain by Cetus in his green woolen coat on a damp summer night. She’s not Andromeda, has never been a princess, and no oracles were consulted to author her demise.

Anna Strong did not fall from grace, she leapt to freedom.

And mayhaps — her vision slides out of focus, like a blurred pane of glass, and a solemn whiteness prickles at the corners of her eyes — she will land among the stars. Edmund will be able to look up into the night and see her, shining down on him.

All is undone, and her limbs loosen like knots in a string. What once held fast and tight crumbles, and she feels like a marionette with lost strings. She falls.

And falls, and falls, and falls, eyes on the stars on the American flag still a hundred yards away.   

 

 

 

Sequestered in Major Tallmadge’s tent, Hewlett sits at his chess set. It’s a routine, at least. Wake up, write to his mother and his sister, eat breakfast on a soldier’s schedule. Wait until the Continental Marines arrive to escort him from the house to the encampment, wait until Tallmadge is finished with his morning duties. Play chess with the enemy. On occasion, bicker and banter with the enemy as he reads reports and files correspondence. Ask when he last received word from Anna, or her contact in York City. Receive a vague answer. Be escorted back to the house. Languish until supper.

Washington’s headquarters boasts seven thousand troops. And in the middle of July, it is as hot as the gates to hell even at seven in the morning.

Pulling at his cravat, he picks up the white queen in his other hand.

With Anna gone, his parole is revoked. _When_ Anna is gone, truly. And she can be gone quite often, sometimes for mere days, sometimes for longer. He isn’t imprisoned with the worst of the lot, but his days are long and lonely. Smiling in a sardonic fashion, he considers the ivory piece in the his hand — the king may only move one square at a time, but the queen, oh _she_ may go wherever she pleases, to win the campaign and the day. But Hewlett supposes that is a woman’s lot in life, to be underestimated. Even if _he_ thinks Anna was born to be admired.

_Edmund, I was born to pull pitchers of ale._

_Those aren’t mutually exclusive, my dear._

If only he loved her less.

  


 

 

From inside the line of tents and outbuildings, Ben Tallmadge stands with his hand on the pommel of his sword, mid-sentence in a conversation with General Washington when he hears the shouts of a horseman approaching. He knows her by sight, even from afar.

“Mrs. Strong?” the General asks, squinting.

It’s Caleb’s horse.

“Something’s wrong,” Ben says, voice turning from a tired morning rasp to something pained and raw. “Something is wrong, she’s not supposed—”

Anna Strong is a hundred yards from the gates when the three arrows piercing her shoulder, arm, and collarbone at last cut the determined straightness in her spine and send her toppling from her horse. Mouth agape, Ben watches helplessly as she plummets to the muddy ground.

He takes off running.

“Anna?” Ben shouts. Mud squelches under his boots as his feet carry him to her. “Anna! Anna!”

If her eyes weren’t open, her broken body contorted on the ground would make for a macabre sight. (That is a lie, it is a macabre sight, and the fact that she is awake make it all so much worse.) Wide and white, her eyes search for someone familiar to lay upon. She sees him, and his pounding heart leaps. It is then that he notices her mouth moving, with no sound coming out but — he forces himself to hold his breath, listen beyond his pulse in his ears, tune out the commanding shout of Washington and aide-de-camps — a low, strangled wheeze.

One word: _Simcoe._  

Dropping to his knees, he lifts her up off the dirt, tries to keep the arrows from moving within her shoulders and arm. It is then that he notices one last injury—

A vibrant rope burn around her throat.

The world stills. Not for long, not for more than a few seconds or so. Long enough for him to cradle Anna in his arms. _This is so much more than a bee sting._ The thought rings through his head in an unfamiliar voice, obviously one not his own. This is unspeakable, what has been done to Anna. _So much more than a bee sting._ But it might be his voice, nearly unrecognizable, the same voice that ordered her to York City, but not the same voice. The voice of Anna’s friend.

“Major, bring her inside.” General Washington’s hand lands on his shoulder with a degree of tenderness, but his voice is stern.

_But what do I do?_

He promised Anna, once, that her Major Hewlett wouldn’t get hurt. He did, of course, and she saved him. He’s never made the Major any such promises, feels like he has in no way betrayed him. But as he hoists himself up from the dirt, Anna resting awkwardly in his arms, he feels as though he has betrayed someone.

The girl who held his hand.

“She needs a surgeon,” he replies, voice trembling. “General, she needs a surgeon.”

“Yes, Mrs. Strong will be attended to. But we must bring her inside, now, and — search the saddlebags, see if she was carrying documents or a missive.” He directs the last part of his directive to Hamilton, who intercepts the enlisted men from leading Caleb’s horse to be untacked and groomed. “Someone put her on that horse, Major Tallmadge. While I am deeply relieved she has hope of surviving this, someone decided that _she_ was the one to escape the ordeal.”

“You do not think she survived alone?”

“Major Tallmadge, could _you_ seat a horse with your shoulders incapacitated so grievously?”

His legs are moving, he is unaware of that until he realizes that General Washington is striding ahead because _he_ is trying to keep pace with him and move obstacles out of his way. Belatedly, Ben realizes he is taking Anna to his tent. His mind diminishes the fact that it was _Caleb’s horse_ that Anna rode in on, makes it small and manageable, something insignificant enough so that he’s not incapacitated by Anna tenses and moaning, her head lolling against his chest.

“What happened?” he asks, charting a course forward. “Shitting hell, Anna, what happened?”

Why was Caleb there? Where is Caleb now? Captured, wounded, _dead?_

Are they all compromised?

Should he send a courier to recall Abe and Culper Jr and the rest of the ring? Is there a regiment marching on them now? A last-ditch assassination attempt on General Washington, has a bomb been planted in the Congressional hall? Who _did_ this to her?

She’s already told them who. Simcoe, the scourge of Setauket.

One hundred paces. Then eighty.

In her last message past out of the city there had been no warning that she was being closed in on. Was there no warning? He wonders if Anna can hear his heart rattling in his chest, plummeting from between his lungs and the cage of his ribs down to his stomach.

Fifty paces… forty… thirty… his knees have melted from under him by ten paces. Can she breathe? Is she breathing?

The General sweeps the flap to his tent to the side.

As he’s swallowed up by canvas, the sounds of camp recede until he hears nothing but silence. Washington clears the table, sending papers fluttering and cartographer’s instruments clattering to the floor. Silence, but the _whoosh_ of blood in his ears. Hewlett, once seated at the chess set, stands. Pale-faced, he mouths some exclamation, coming to Anna’s side.

“I don’t know,” Ben answers, because it can only be the correct answer.

The moment stretches out before Ben, elongated and endless. His arms burn with her weight. The table in the center of the tent is emptied of the detritus littering it. His lodgings fill with the General’s staff. Hewlett’s hands coming to frame Anna’s face as he places her on the tabletop, his mouth forming the same words over and again — _my dear Anna, Anna my dear, dearest Anna_ — as he tries to decide on the best way to set her down. The arrows have pierced through her, one shot through the front of her arm and out the back, the second through her back on the same side and jutting out from under her collarbone, and the last having entered through the front of her shoulder joint and out the back, forcing her arm to rest at an odd angle.

As delicate as his soldier’s hands can manage, he lays her on her side.

“Search her,” the General commands. “She might have something pertinent hidden on her person.” Then, not ungently, he nods to Ben, as if he were studiously ignoring the presence of the British officer among them. “It is better if someone she knows does it. Major Tallmadge.”

An order, from his commanding officer. He doesn’t question it — he knows Anna has carried messages in her stockings and the hem of her shift before — and moves from bracing her back to the opposite end of the table. Her skirts are damp and heavy, but he makes quick work of exposing her to the middle of her thighs.

Hewlett crows in protest.

“God, man, she’s not even awake—”

“Do you think Anna would wish for us to not receive the information she was ready to die for?” Ben chances a glance at Anna’s face, slack and motionless. His breath catches in his throat. “She may have saved us all, not for the first time. We must do our duty by her—”

“Anna is _not_ a soldier.”

Hewlett’s fingers capture the end of Anna’s petticoat.

“Mrs. Strong,” the General interrupts, his voice on the sliver of ground between cold and kind that is ever inhabits, “is a more worthy participant in this war than most of the men in this camp, and moreover she is under _my_ command. So while I may sympathize with your desire to protect Mrs. Strong’s privacy, Major Hewlett, she is an agent first and woman second. Major Tallmadge.”

“Please, let—” Hewlett begins, then stops himself, resting the flat of his palm over the inside of Anna’s knee. “There’s a hidden pocket, at the top of her stockings. Those garters are sewn over them, to keep them flush against her.”

Sure enough.

On her right thigh, under a yellow satin garter, is a false seam some six inches long. Fingers shaking, Ben extracts a letter and hands it to the General. He keeps his eyes steady on Anna’s yellow garter and no higher. It is embroidered in her sloppy needlepoint in thread of burgundy and black.

_Omnis amans militat._

“Ovid?” he asks Hewlett as Washington unfolds the letter and holds it to the light.

“I’ve been teaching her Latin,” he replies defensively, his voice rough like coarse sand against rock. “She is adept at languages. It is most emphatically a disgrace that she never had the opportunity to receive an education.”

“She’s done well enough for herself,” Ben replies, finding a defensive edge in his tone as well; abandoned by Abe, left in squalor when her father was executed, his assets seized, negotiating a marriage to Selah Strong and running the tavern better than many men.

 _Many_ men could not have done what Anna has done.

“She never had the choices others have,” Hewlett responds.

“Like you?”

Unblinking, he continues smoothing Anna’s hair away from her face. Her eyes have begun to open again, but with no indication that she knows that she’s looking at someone. “Exactly like me.”

There is a silence. Ben doesn’t know what to say. He has never thought to expect self-awareness from a man like Major Edmund Hewlett, an aristocratic man from a long-established merchant family but so wealthy that he was never raised with the intent to have to manage his own business. Prosperity was dropped into his lap, and Ben has seen the gowns and jewels he buys for Anna, a woman more at home in roughspun and wool than satin and taffeta. It is a fine thing, that Hewlett looks at Anna and sees a queen.

It is plain to anyone who sees the way he _looks_ at her.

Ben swallows hard, leaning his elbows on the table, fingers in the halves of a tear in Anna’s shift, careful where her torn skin is red and ragged, a circle of paleness ringed by purple blemish blossomed on her back.

“Major Tallmadge.”

Is it infected? Will she become septic? He remembers the days her mother languished between life and death, the infection that burned her from the core.

“General?”

Washington folds the letter between his pointer and middle fingers. “I must take my leave. You will send updates on Mrs. Strong to the Hasbrouck House, he will be organizing an expedition of men to secure the surrounding area and our operatives in the city as well as search for Lieutenant Brewster and if necessary, secure his release.” He smiles in a small way, at Ben’s questioning look. Questioning, but grateful. “I also recognized the horse, Major.”

“The message, sir?”

“In code,” Washington answers, in a tone of voice that is almost fond. He clears his throat.  “I imagine she was ambushed trying to leave the city.”

“But hanged, sir? In the small hours of the morning?” If she rode, non-stop… she could not have left New York before dusk. “There was no trial.”

There were no witnesses.

“I believe that would be at the behest of a certain Ranger who undoubtedly recognized Mrs. Strong as a Patriot, and not the widow of a Loyalist banker as she established herself,” Washington answers. “Though the preciseness of actions so close to civilization would lead me to believe it was not _his_ trap that was sprung onto Mrs. Strong. From what you have told me, he is not nearly so savvy. More will be revealed by the information in this letter.”

“General?” He doubts she took the time to encode a message as she fought to stay upright on her way to camp.

“Whatever sent her from York City in the middle of the night when no decent woman would be travelling alone — my estimation would be that it was both willingly divulged and a crucial element to our cause,” he explains as they are joined by medics hauling equipment, and then a tall man in plainclothes, an untidy wig, and thick spectacles. “And here is Dr. Craik. I shall take my leave, and will return to speak with Mrs. Strong, God willing.”

The surgeon removes Ben from his position at Anna’s back.

“Gentlemen,” he trills in a thick Scottish burr. “If you would. She will need to be undressed.”

General Washington takes that as his cue to make his definitive exit.

 

 

 

Between the two of them, Craik, a medic, and an assortment of knives and scissors it takes ten to remove her skirts and bodice. Hewlett takes it upon himself to unlace her stays, clumsy handiwork making a slow job of it. It is surreal, how much one’s life can upend with no notice, in just a few minutes. It is not the first time Anna has done this to him, and he doubts it shall be the last. But this has not yet become Real. It is merely something happening in front of him, and he is driven by pure instinct to tend to her.

Tallmadge braces her as he drags the corset down her arms, carefully lifting the straps over her wounds. They are loathe to jostle her, fearful that their slightest moments will rouse her. It is nonsensical, but it is all they can do. 

“If you let me leave this camp, I will personally see to Simcoe’s end,” he mutters, catching his eye.

“Anna would see to mine.”

Ben raises a single brow, daring him to suggest that dear Anna would react in any other way.

  


 

 

When the first of the arrows is forced through her, ripping through the clots her body had built around the intruding wood, she awakens with a half-formed scream that is aborted within seconds, dying on her lips. Limbs jerking, she struggles for purchase, contorting in pain against the hard surface on which she lies.

“My dear, my dear, I’m here.”

She cannot move her right arm, but her left curls at the elbow, then flails forward. Edmund catches her hand, sealing it between both of his. Her eyes do not open, pinched closed as if warding off one sense will disrupt another, stop the fire spreading from her shoulders to her neck and skull.

“Opium, she needs  — could you, yes. Thank you.”

A tin cup is placed at her lips. She drinks, and the world becomes heavier. The pain does not stop, but is merely displaced somewhere below the ground.

“Anna, can you — can you hear me? Can you speak?” Edmund asks, his voice close. She thinks if she were able to open her eyes, his mouth would be next to her ear. A warmth spreads out from her center, radiating to her fingers and toes, like lying on the grass the sun. She wishes to go back to sleep, or wherever she was before the pain wakened her. “My dear?”

With a sigh, she opens her mouth to tell him she can hear him.

An airy noise gurgles up her throat, and with it, the pain surfaces. It must be evident on her face, because he shushes her, one hand cupping her cheek.

“Do not overtax yourself. Go back to sleep.”

But his voice is uneven and warbling, troubling enough that she forces her eyes to open. Then she remembers where she is and how she returned to camp — Townsend sending the message to the dead drop, being captured by Simcoe’s Rangers the moment her boat touched the shore, Rogers leading Caleb and Abe to slaughter, Caleb hefting his crossbow as she hanged from the makeshift gallows, struggling to aim for the rope — all of it.

The arrow in her collarbone is removed.

And despite the swelling in her throat, she screams.

**Author's Note:**

>  **A/N:** Anna's garter is embroidered (yes, this was a thing women used to do, which is definitely a style we should bring back) with a line from Ovid's _Amores_ which is essentially ancient Greek erotica. _Militat omnis amans_ translates roughly to "every lover is a soldier." The second half of that line is _et habet sua castra Cupido_ , or "and Cupid has his campaigns," the chapter title.


End file.
